Patton Dodd explains why praying for a parking spot completely misses the point, of both God and prayer.
There are single moms or dads with three kids and bags of groceries, elderly men with oxygen tanks to push across icy lots, people recovering from surgery who aren’t advised to be out of doors in the first place—and maybe, just maybe, God hears their cries for parking spaces close to the front door of Target, or the P.O., or their urban dwelling. Maybe he even provides those spaces from time to time, caring for sparrows as he does.But as supplication goes, praying for parking is, for those who pray, a mark of shame. It’s on par with praying that The Gap has the right size jeans or that your TiVo’s hard drive doesn’t crash during "Grey's Anatomy." It’s a prayer of tedium—for those too bored to pray for things that matter. It’s a prayer of luxury—for that blessed 1% whose wealth can put them in a car and give them cause to drive to the tony shopping district where parking is the only scarcity.
And, of course, a God who will provide a parking spot for the devout but not a cure for cancer is a twisted God indeed.
There are altogether too many people who neglect the mandatory subtext of all petitionary prayer:
"If You will that it should be otherwise, may I have the strength to bear it."
...though that thought seems unlikely to occur to someone fixated on a parking spot or designer jeans.
FWP: I'd rather pray for strength than grace, given the option!